A Life of Devotion and Education

     Thanks to the documents provided by the Presentation of Mary Manchester Province Archives, we can know much more about the life of Rebecca Albert (1908-1996). As her grand nephew, I called her Aunt Rebecca but most people called her Sister Rebecca due to her chosen profession and service to the church. Her death and burial records recorded her name as "Sr. Rebecca Albert". She lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight.  

Rebecca Albert in 1930

     Rebecca's childhood included a tragic life event - the loss of her mother to cancer. Like her siblings, she was raised by different relatives. In a recent conversation with her nephew, Roland Albert, he recalls that Rebecca lived with the family of an her aunt after the death of her mother. Upon graduating from grammar school at St. Hyacinths in Westbrook, she was sent to a girls boarding school in New Hampshire. The Diocese of Portland apparently provided financing for orphaned children to receive a Catholic education. Other Albert girls were sent to boarding schools in New Hampshire as well, including my mother, but only one went on to become a nun. In February 1933, Rebecca received her Profession of Vows and chose the religious name of "Sister Wilfrid-Marie" presumably to honor her brother-priest, Wilfrid Albert, whom she had a special affinity for. She took her final vows in the Order of the Presentation of Mary on August 15, 1938. 

St. Marie Parish in Manchester, NH

     The other lifelong passion of Rebecca's was teaching. Her teaching assignments detailed in the archive document shows she taught at nine different elementary and high schools from 1933 to 1987 which allays my concern of the numbers of schools I have taught at. Most years she taught at St. Marie High School in Manchester, NH. The subjects she taught were English, Writing and Art. She also taught writing skills to her fellow sisters in a college extension program. 

     In 1987, Rebecca retired to St. Marie Residence in Manchester, NH. She passed on March 23, 1996. Her life was devoted to God and education. Although I have not been able to confirm that she received a college degree, an obituary printed in the Portland Press Herald of March 26, 1996 reported that she obtained a bachelor of arts degree from the University of New Hampshire. In a call to the UNH Alumni office, she was not listed in the database.

Notes:  Much of the information in this post was taken from a short biography written by Sister Gabrielle Messier, and the source of the Manchester picture came from Susan Bailey's website.

Sister Rebecca Albert (1908-1996)

Pepere’s younger sister was a devout, educated and artistic person. In 1930, she was living with Pepere on Bridge Street in Westbrook as shown on the 1930 US Census. That same year in September, an article appeared in a local paper announcing she was to enter the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary in St. Hyacinthe, Canada to continue her studies to become a nun.  She was 22 at the time. Before living with Pepere, she lived with his sister, Mrs. Emmanuel Gallant (Antoinette Albert) on King Street in Westbrook.
Did you know there was a town in Quebec called St. Hyacinthe? It is located due northwest of Montreal. Below is an image of the town and its park taken from Wikipedia.

Sister Rebecca would later be transferred to Manchester, NH to continue her vows, teach and practice her art. She painted many pictures including a few images hanging over the piano at the home of Roland and Janet Albert in Westbrook. One of these paintings is shown in the Family Treasures post on this blog. The newspaper article goes on to say that she was trained in art at Coaticook High School in Canada where she graduated in 1929 as valedictorian. Later she attended the University of New Hampshire which was a real accomplishment considering that it was uncommon at that time for women to work on advanced degrees.

If you are an older Albert, what do you remember about Sister Rebecca? I remember visiting her with my family on regular visits to New Hampshire. For an older, seemingly sedentary person, she also had an animated quality about her.  She was always asking me questions about my lessons and somehow she knew I’d become a teacher. Sometime around the age of ten, she gave me a book on Longfellow poems as a birthday present. 
Note regarding source of the newspaper article: 
The article was clipped and attached to a handwritten letter but did not include the date or the name of the paper. Since she was living in Westbrook at the time, I assumed it was a local paper - either the Westbrook American or the Portland Press Herald.

Family Treasures

Three family treasures have already been mentioned in earlier posts: the Wilfrid Genealogy Book from 1948, the Brookfield Clothing Award (a gold statue) won by Pepere around 1960, and the 1990 audio recording of Memere and Aunt Jo.  By family members responding to this post, we can create an inventory of other valued family possessions. Two books in my own library were signed by Wilfrid Albert and passed on to me by Sister Rebecca:
The Poems of Longfellow, signed by Wilfrid on July 16. 1959, and
The Reader's Digest of Books by Helen Rex Keller, signed by Wilfrid in 1941.

Here are some additional family heirlooms:

1. A vase given to Memere as a gift from Wilfrid in the 1940's.

2. Painting by Sister Rebecca

3. A boudoir bench to hold dolls from Pauline's youth.

4. These hand carved statues were owned by Wilfrid Albert. Paul Albert provides some information about them:

One was sculpted in Switzerland from a famous school of sculpture and depicts a farmer representing one of his grandfathers. The other was carved in a famous carving school in Quebec and depicts a fisherman representing his other grandfather.

For family history purposes, the two items of most value by far are the Genealogy book of Wilfrid Albert and the audio recording done by Becky in 1990.  Thank goodness we have a librarian in the family who took an early interest to preserve something like the voices of our elders.  What else do we have out there to enrich our family's legacy!?